


Finding a Light

by liminoid



Category: Metal Gear
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, CW for emetophobia, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Gen, Mental Health Issues, PTSD, Slight Canon Divergence, Stream of Consciousness, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-24
Updated: 2017-12-23
Packaged: 2018-06-10 10:42:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 10,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6953389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liminoid/pseuds/liminoid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Filling in some of the gaps in Raiden's story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The first plunge of his knife into flesh feels nothing like it did with the training dummies. There's so much less resistance, and it's less hassle to pull it out and bring it down again. He does it until the body underneath him – bound for his convenience – has stopped its screaming. The dummies didn't do that either, but the bad men in the films they watched did. Jack already knows about it, though. That's just what happens when you stab or shoot something.

Looking at the body's face, however, confuses him. He doesn't see a hostile scowl of anger or a contented smile, just wide eyes and a gaping mouth. Jack thinks it looks like a hippopotamus. He mimics it, stretches his mouth as wide as he can. Why anyone would ever make such a strange face?

His godfather tells him to be more efficient.

Fear, he later learns, is what that hippopotamus expression means. It's what makes people scream, too. The noise is dreadful, but people do it a lot less when you shoot them compared with knifing. Less messy. He understands what his godfather meant by efficiency now. 

Once the war is over, it's as if this fear had grown and infected everyone. The other kids and even some of the staff in the relief centre cower from him. People begin to whisper about him howling through the night and he's moved to a room of his own, far from the others.

Where Jack has grown to expect praise for his ruthlessness, he now receives punishment. Reading and writing do nothing to combat his constant itch for conflict, so he argues with anyone who has the misfortune of coming into contact with him. Over time, he amps it up, starts to knock over desks and launch chairs at the teachers. This earns him the privilege of doing whatever he wants, only he doesn't really _know_ what he wants.

Apparently, “Ripper” and “Devil” were never meant to be compliments; there's nothing he's good at any more.

– 

Jack discovers that he doesn't think like a normal person should. Counselling makes that quite clear. Even with knowledge of his past, his answers to the therapists' questions ring alarm bells – he is given a list of numbers to call in an “emergency” but they don't quite explain what that instance of the word means. He goes once a week and they try to make him talk, each time it's more stupid and pointless than the last. Eventually he learns what they want to hear from him: he pretends to listen and fills out diaries and workbooks with false information. On the day he circles all the “rarely”s in his questionnaire, smattering in enough “sometimes”s to make it more believable, they let him go. After what feels like an eternity, Jack is left to fend for himself.

As much as he's loathe to admit it, he _feels_ like he's picked up some “coping techniques” from it all. Defiance gave him command over others in the past, but compliance requires significantly less effort, and delivers a similar result. Give yourself enough proverbial slaps on the wrist for thinking the wrong thoughts, and eventually they'll go away. Chew up the insides of your cheeks, dig your nails into your palms. Think about that instead. Keep a calm face and give people what they want, even if it's not how you truly feel.

To get through life, all you need to do is disconnect.

He's good at something again. He thinks it's “keeping himself under control” when it's really avoidance.

– 

His first experience in VR is much better than that of his colleagues. While others flinch, throw the pistol-shaped controller across the room, or claw to rip the headset from their eyes, Jack calmly dispatches his virtual enemies, one by one. Everything feels fluid and natural.

Over the next few weeks, he works his way through each of the “maps”. They range from simple blank rooms – walls and floors covered with a glowing, yellow grid – to fully immersive cityscapes, their horizons even tuned to the current time. The levels' landscapes eventually turn to red clay and bushy, green vegetation. He can feel the dust in his throat, and it's only then that Jack's hands drop his gun to yank the headset off. Both lenses crack from the impact with the floor.

The office is stuffy, stifling, and he can't quite explain his actions to his superiors.

He passes out and wakes up three days later in the medical bay.

– 

Involving other people in his life is a huge mistake that brings far too many unfamiliar feelings with it. Rose tells him she loves him but he doesn't believe it. She'll get sick of him eventually, nobody could possibly want to be around someone as difficult as he is. Still, she does stay. Sometimes she makes him feel so happy he could burst. 

_She's so beautiful._

He watches her sleep, her breathing even and lips slightly parted. 

_Imagine being able to sleep so peacefully._

He holds a fleshy part on the top of his left thigh in a vice-like grip for a few minutes. The mere concept that other people don't wake up covered in a cold sweat leads him into an inescapable spiral. He has to stop thinking, he has to go home now, he wishes he'd brought his car. Nobody else who's out at three in the morning will notice the tears streaming down his face, will they?

Once the sun rises, the mark on his thigh has grown murky – grey and purple. Rose calls him. He never stays, she says, why can't he just sleep in the same bed as her? His brain doesn't bother processing anything until she asks him if there's something wrong with _her_. At this, Jack bursts into laughter and can't stop – he's still laughing after she's hung up. 

This is it, he thinks. Surely, she'll leave him now. Surely.

But she doesn't.

– 

In Arsenal Gear, all the things he'd been running from come crashing onto him like an anvil, and he feels something break.

_I don't want this any more. I can't do it. It's not fair. It's not fair._

For the first time in god knows when, Raiden lets his guard down enough to think about what _he_ wants, rather than what needs to be done. And what he wants is to curl up on the floor and cry, to wail open-mouthed and snot-nosed, but he can't yet because other people are relying on him. 

_Why do **I** have to do it? I don't **want** to._

He ignores the petulant, childish statements that his mind keeps flinging at him, ignores the horrible pain in his throat and the prickling at his eyes. Instead, he thinks of the goodness in others that he feels he lacks – that he'll fight to the death to protect. He thinks of Olga, Snake, and Otacon. 

The metal gears keep coming, and he keeps destroying them.

_**I can't.** _

Enough is enough, and he falls to his knees, but even this reprieve is stolen from him. Olga tells him to live, and is killed in his place.

–

It's all over now and he's not even relieved. Where does he go now? What's he supposed to do?

How many people's lives had he ended – directly or otherwise – now? It's not just Emma's pallid body and the look of utter anguish on Otacon's face that keep coming back to him, it's all the nameless men, women and children too. Solidus tumbles backwards and falls off the Federal Hall but there's no sense of accomplishment over his victory, if you could even call it that. Enacting vengeance on behalf of the parents he doesn't remember, for everything he's lost, has a strange, numb feeling to it. Raiden climbs down from the rooftop and nobody around him even notices or acknowledges what has happened.

Snake turns up to drag him back to Earth. Once more, he talks to Raiden as a person – not an experiment, not a case to solve, not a puppet or an obligation. Discarding his dog-tags makes him feels a little lighter. This is Raiden's second chance in life, the point where he can nudge himself into a different trajectory.

When he turns around to see that Rose is there, he gently holds her face in his hands and she becomes real again. _She's here; she hasn't left you._

Snake's words sink in fully; _this is his second chance_.


	2. Chapter 2

Rose delegates various moving-in duties to Raiden, to keep him busy. He sits amongst a fort of cardboard boxes and unmade flat-pack furniture, unsure of where to begin. The boxes are full of Rose's personal effects, her actual things – not the collection of items that she had amassed to impress him. Perhaps deceive him was a better phrase to use, but he pushes that thought away quickly. Old habits are hard to break. Sighing, he musters up the energy to haul a few of the boxes into their respective rooms. None of this stuff belongs to him yet he knows that he'll be the one cleaning up all the time. Still, the apartment is a good size – plainly decorated but clean and bright. Building a few pieces of furniture – the bookcase, a tv-stand, a desk – temporarily stops Raiden's mind from replaying through every single painful experience he'd ever had. A walk in the park that Rose manages to coax him into leaves him feeling a little drained, but maybe a little happier.

He feels guilty because he's not doing what he said he would, he's still not trying to accept his past. Learning about the real Rose is easier than learning about the real Raiden. Her natural hair colour is only a tiny bit lighter than she'd been dying it, but she really prefers keeping it short. Barely any of their favourite films overlap, though there are still a few of their tastes that they hold in common. It doesn't disappoint him; truth be told, it's a breath of fresh air. 

Life continues on. Raiden continues to struggle with it. Every so often Rose brings home newspapers with odd jobs circled in them, but she nods and smiles with an understanding warmth when Raiden says he's not ready yet. Rose never presses him further. He can't shake the feeling that she has an ulterior motive, like he was being set up again. She's too caring. Too kind. 

-

A third loop of the steam-mop infomercial that Raiden has been so engrossed in starts. He does this kind of thing more than he'd like to admit, finding some bizarre comfort in watching the same, mindless shit, over and over again. Each night, after a bout of heavy drinking, he'll meld himself into the sofa for a marathon of utter garbage. It's better than letting his mind run on its own, he thinks. Rose will find him there when she gets up for work, express her concern but leaves her disappointment unspoken. He knows it's there, though, and recently she's been making less effort to hide it. It's been four months since they've moved in together, and he can count the number of times he's slept in the bedroom on one hand.

-

Four months is a lot longer than he had expected before Rose starts calling him out on his behaviour. She stands with her hands on her hips, waiting for him to respond to her queries about him finding a job, voluntary work, anything to get him out of the house. All he does is get drunk and watch TV and she's worried about him, she says. He doesn't believe her, she's cut him so much slack and he's done nothing with it. Anyone would start to resent that. But how is he supposed to handle a job when he can barely keep track of himself? He has no answer for her, so he keeps his eyes on the TV screen.

She brings up the baby – he's surprised at how long it's taken her to bring that up as well – her voice strained and louder than before, but he still doesn't reply. There's nothing for him to say because she'll never really be able to understand. And he doesn't _want_ her to understand – doesn't want to inflict any more of his rotten mess of a past on her.

She speaks, in a tone that Raiden has never ever heard her use, to tell him that she gives up. 

His nails dig into his clenched fists, and rage suddenly swells from the pit of his belly. He jumps to his feet to yell something at the top of his lungs – he doesn't catch what it is but he's losing his peripheral vision. The bathroom door slams loud enough to shake Raiden out of his angered stupor. Rage subsides to make way for shame to wrench at his guts. He looks down at his hand to find that he must have ripped a clump of his hair out.

When he leaves their apartment, this time he doesn't leave the usual “be back soon” note for Rose to find on the fridge.

-

Rain hammers down onto Raiden's back. It's been hours since he's been turfed out of whatever bar it was that he'd chosen to visit tonight, and walking it off seemed like the most sensible idea at the time. Whether this still rings true, as he stumbles further into an unfamiliar neighbourhood, is another matter. He slumps over an apartment doorstep in a futile attempt to keep the contents of his stomach down. With one hand clamped over his mouth, he uses the other to drag himself up, feeling his way across the dirty bricks into a nearby alley, away from harsh street-lights. His tongue feels like lead. Saliva dribbles from his lips as he gags but before he can stop himself, he hurls a mixture of stomach acid, whiskey and not much else onto the wall. He attempts to lean against the wall, plants his forehead into the crook of his elbow, but he just slides down, grazing his forearm as he goes.

-

_Guilt hangs over Rose. She has the means to keep tabs on Jack wherever he goes – his nanos haven't changed since the Big Shell – but she swore she would never do it again. Abusing his trust is the last thing she wants to do, but what if he's seriously injured himself? He'd understand her actions surely._

_She gets in the car, drives until the red point on her GPS is close enough. It's pouring with rain when she steps out onto the street – it's been raining all night, how long has he been here? She wrinkles her nose as an acrid stench washes over her. Jack's passed out, crumpled in a heap on the floor. He's still breathing, thank god, so she scoops her arms under the backs of his knees and his shoulders and tries to lift him up but he's too heavy; she can't strain herself too much this far along in her pregnancy. She shakes his shoulders, pulls his eyelids open, shouts his name; he mumbles something in reply and rises to his feet. Rose helps him stagger to the car and lays him down along the back-seat in the recovery position._

_Rose knows that things have to get worse before they can get better. She knows that she can't even begin to comprehend all of the terrible things that have happened to Jack. She can't help him, but she can't stop the deep feeling of pity and sorrow that pushes against her ribcage as if it's trying to escape._

_All she wants is for him to be OK._

-

Upon regaining lucidity, Raiden finds himself with his face planted on a toilet seat. The tiles on the wall are familiar – plain, beige, with fresh grouting. This is his appartment, he realises. How the hell did he get back here? That urgent, stomach-churning feeling returns and he retches into the toilet bowl. There are fingers running through his hair, gathering it – slightly damp and frizzy from the rain – and holding it out of his face. When it clicks that they belong to Rose, and that she must have found him and brought him back, he starts crying. He doesn't know why and he can't stop.

Amidst the wailing and convulsing he iterates through a set of barely intelligible self-depreciating phrases, as if they're some sort of mantra.

_I'msorryI'mdisgustingIdon'tdeserveyouIdon'tknowwhyyou'restillwithmeI'mdisgustingIdon'tde-_

Rose shushes him, kisses the crown of his head.

Once Raiden is only capable of hawking up tiny globs of spit, and stomach and intestinal fluid, he removes his hold from the toilet seat, pushing back onto his haunches. He hears Rose pours a glass of water and dampen a towel for him, and say she'll wait in the bedroom until he's finished cleaning himself up.

Almost forty minutes later Raiden emerges from the room, shirtless and looking utterly defeated. He perches next to Rose, pale and trembling. She grabs hold of him and hugs him with all her strength, as if she thought she'd never see him again. He tries to reciprocate – he wants to – but his arms hurt and he feels so weak. They separate and he looks at her with eyes that he's sure are comically tired and bloodshot. He can feel his eyelashes clump together with tears every time he blinks. He doesn't have the energy to stay awake anymore.

Raiden crawls under the sheets and Rose follows to cradle his head against her chest. 

-

A month passes. Every time he thinks that the fog has lifted, that he can finally make some progress, Raiden blanks out. He decides to do what he does best and runs from it all. Why should he waste any more effort to better himself when it won't work? He runs because he'll always be broken and no amount of Rose trying to save him will fix that. It's not fair to keep subjecting her to his endless emotional baggage.

He packs his things into a single rucksack and leaves while Rose is at work – too cowardly to face her. The letter he's written should be enough. It's several pages long but the only real points in it are _it's not you it's me_ and _don't contact me again_.

She respects his wishes – of course she does – until he receives a text, two months later. She's had a miscarriage. He doesn't feel anything.

Soon, even the alcohol doesn't displace the desperate urge for conflict. It's never really left him. It takes Raiden over and he starts getting kicked out forcibly from bars. He doesn't have the money to afford anything but there's no repercussions because he doesn't technically exist. Goading other drunkards makes it so easy for him to get the shit beaten out of him and he's glad – he's happy because it's what he wants and what he deserves. Dull aches, bruises, the sharp taste of blood in his mouth; he's missed them all so much. But the thrill gets less and less each time.

Maybe he's dead already. He certainly feels like he is.


	3. Chapter 3

Sticky sweat coats his fingertips as he runs them over his chest. With bleary eyes, he raises his head to get a better view of his surroundings. The air is cold, damp and musty, and he's in an office of some sort, lying on... a church pew. That was the last thing Raiden would have expected, he must have really fucked up this time. His head is pounding, and he feels as though he's been chewing cotton, but he manages to make a hoarse noise to catch the attention of the person at the desk. She looks up, raises her eyebrows and states her surprise at the fact that he is still alive. Raiden laughs – bitter and strained – and agrees with her sentiment. He thanks her for giving him a place to stay that isn't a street corner, but he really wants to leave now. She says he can't. His heart sinks. What did he _do_?

It turns out he didn't do anything, and he's not even in America any more - he's in Prague. The woman introduces herself with what he assumes is an alias – “Big Mama” – and explains that she is the leader of a private military company called “Paradise Lost” who has been tracking him for some time. They essentially kidnapped him because they need his blood – it sounds ominous but she reassures him they just need enough to extract some of his nanos. She wants to recover the remains of Big Boss, and within Raiden is the location of these remains. No pressure, she says, and flashes a smile that Raiden has trouble deciphering.

That infuriating feeling creeps over him – the one that makes him feel like he won't be stuck forever, like he's not a dead man walking. Before he realises, he's said that he'll do it if they help him with something first: if they help him find Olga's kid.

-

Big Mama seems to have decided that it's best not to leave him to his own devices and asks one of the staff to offer up a spare room for him – she hides her intentions under the guise that there's not enough room at their headquarters, that this huge church can't hold one, single Raiden. He never wants to live with someone else ever again, even if it's only a few weeks, but Big Mama is hard to defy.

Apparently the woman she chose is the one who found him in the first place. Her exact role in the company isn't made clear but she's the one who has the unfortunate task of retrieving, extracting, and analysing the information from his nanos. Raiden never finds out what the difference between any of these things are. He's uneasy about the whole situation, but he doesn't speak Czech and he's not sure he can learn it in the short amount of time he'll be here. Maybe it wouldn't hurt having a guide.

Aside from making a point of clarifying her name – Coira-with-a-C – she doesn't really talk much. Everything is very awkward at first, but he realises that she'll only speak if she needs something from him, and he learns to do the same. It's a paradigm he's used to, one he flourishes under because he knows where they both stand.

Everyone in this PMC is a war orphan, he learns, and wonders if that's why he's at home here. The people he has to interact with are colleagues and nothing more. There's always someone to tell him what to do, where he should be, and what goals he has to meet. They figure out the exact location of Olga's child, and he's shocked when he finds that his blood – his _own_ blood – is housed there too. Coira somehow maps the floor-plans, target locations and guards' shift patterns into a VR simulation, which Raiden and his co-workers use to formulate a sound path to follow. 

It's never occurred to Raiden that, maybe, all he needs to function as a person is structure. 

The afternoon before he's due to leave for the mission, Raiden sits in the main hall of the church. He's never been religious, never even considered it as an option, but watching dust glitter in the shafts of light that shine through the enormous, stained-glass windows sends a surge of something that he can't put a name to through him.

The word “oceanic” pops into his head, and he remembers Rose telling him about a book she read on Freud; it was a concept of his that she found particularly intriguing. 

Upon this thought, instead of being overcome by a feeling of relentless loss, Raiden just wonders how Rose is doing.

He just hopes she's OK.

-

Coira finds him a few hours later and asks him what he's going to do with the kid once it's over. He hasn't even thought about it, but suggests bringing them back here. The kid's technically a war orphan too, right? It makes sense to Raiden. For the first time, he sees Coira react with something other than indifference, and he realises he's said something wrong. Her eyes squint in disbelief that he could have even thought of something so ridiculous. Panic rises because he hasn't had to deal with others' emotions for so long and he remembers why – he can't do it. 

One step forward, two steps back.

However, she quickly placates him, says she has a better idea. Before he goes, she'll program some co-ordinates into his nanos, and she doesn't say where they lead or who they belong to, but Raiden has grown to trust her judgement.

-

Raiden leaves Olga's little girl – her tiny body swaddled in a blanket – along with a note in front of a grubby apartment door. There are flakes of missing paint, and chips in the wood where the residents have misjudged where to jam their keys. Considering the condition of the neighbourhood, Raiden has severe doubts as to what Coira has planned. He knocks on the door, and darts away to wait in the stairwell, just out of sight, until he can be sure the kid is in safety.

When he sees who she's been left to, his stomach lurches. Otacon peeks through a crack in the door and lets out a quiet gasp when he sees the toddler. He opens the door fully, looks around to check who could have done this, and Raiden holds his breath. After he remains unseen, Otacon makes no hesitation to scoop up the child and go back inside.

Olga's child in the safest hands Raiden can think of.

Several minutes pass but Raiden doesn't manage to shake himself out of his daze. He takes the rental car and drives until it's running on empty. He stops only to eat and refill the petrol-tank, with a fake credit card that Big Mama set him up with, and drives again. He keeps driving until the roads are single-lane tracks, until they disappear completely, until there's nothing but snow.

-

Raiden had originally intended to return to Prague, but now he knows he can't, even though they were going to transfuse his blood back into him. He doesn't care about that now.

He calls Big Mama over codec to say that he can't come back to work for her, but if they ever really need him again, he'll be there in a heartbeat. She says she understands, then wishes him good luck and goodbye.

How many days did this journey take?

At first he thinks of the physical roads he traversed to get here, roads that he barely remembers even though he was on them just recently, but “journey” can have a thousand different meanings.

Here in the middle of this white expanse, he can taste some semblance of freedom. Flurry after flurry of snowflakes collide with him as he walks, ice forming in his breath. He stops at the edge of a steep cliff to watch rays of the rising sun peek out from behind the snow-clouds.

He thinks about Olga's kid, how tiny her hands were. Her heartbeat and her wild, bright eyes. How terrified she must have felt being locked up in a lab for the most important years of her life.

How he was also robbed of those years himself, albeit under different circumstances, and then robbed of any real closure from the perpetrator.

There are so many words that he can't say to Solidus now that he's dead; killed by Raiden's own hands. Words that he now finds himself shouting out into the wilderness and he doesn't even know what he's doing but the words won't stop spilling out. Jumbled, stuttering sentences, full of every single conflicting thought he's held in his head. He screams until his throat won't let him any more.

Shaking, he sits down, the snow lying deep enough to cover his body up to his shoulders.

When he looks up again, the snowfall has stopped. He sees a huge flock of birds moving as one entity, dipping and swirling through the sky, and that same wave of emotion he felt in the church resurfaces. Though there's no need to resist here - he lets it escape and it does so gladly, carried by his raucous laughter. 

Because it's so stupid! Existence, humanity, _everything_ is _so, so stupid_. Everything is stupid but there's still something that keeps him here. On one hand, Raiden is tethered to a place he doesn't want to be in, but on the other, whenever he looks at the world around him, he sees something inherently good in it – he's stunned by nature's beauty and cruelty, by the sheer hope and persistence of humanity. Though life doesn't stop throwing him an endless barrage of curve balls, every single one of them seems to miss this part of Raiden. No matter how much he's wanted to die, how many times he's convinced himself that every single living thing is only out for itself, how many times he's sworn that living isn't worth the pain, or how far Raiden distances himself from it. It doesn't matter. It catches up to him eventually.

This time it's caught him to remind him that he's saved someone else's life. And this time he doesn't have anything to say back; he doesn't have an argument so he takes it with him when he trudges back to the car. He plans out a route to take him further North, only he's not trying to escape from anything now – quite the opposite. He can hide all he wants, he knows that after the months he spent drunk, but that was isolation from his own mind. The physical isolation that the almost uninhabitable countryside in front of him provides him will only isolate him from others, not his thoughts.

It will force him to think, and he's petrified of that, but it's the first and only step he feels he can make at this point.


	4. Chapter 4

A year of wandering and honing his skills in solitude has led to this moment. Raiden crouches on a hilltop, overlooking an inconspicuous medical facility. Night-vision binoculars reveal a collection of blocky buildings with thin windows – the tallest one in the left corner of the facility housing the remains of Big Boss. He begins to move, silently, to a break in the walls. Up and over a small section of chain fence, he stalks around the perimeter of the facility, pressing himself against the cold stone wall. Switching to thermal goggles allows him to avoid the scattering of personnel in the courtyard. The security isn't as tight as he was expecting it to be, and he slips into his target building behind an unsuspecting guard. 

There are no lifts in this building, and Big Boss' remains are supposed to be on the seventh floor. As he ascends, Raiden's hair sticks to his forehead with sweat, the fabric across his chest tight as his breathing deepens. Past the third floor, the lights are off, and he hasn't encountered anyone else since the courtyard; the room Big Boss was held in isn't even locked. It doesn't seem right, but a codec call to Big Mama encourages him to take any luck he can get, and lets him know that a specialised helicopter will arrive to collect the body at his request.

What is left of Big Boss repulses him – a torso of bones and viscera. He disconnects the assorted wires that are attached to the body-bag and scoops it up into his arms. It squirms under his hold, he can feel its warmth through his sneaking suit. His stomach churns, but he doesn't have time to feel like this – the nanomachines will only keep it alive for so long.

 

When he reaches for the handle, the door bursts open and the room is assaulted by harsh light. He holds the torso under his arm and rushes to unsheathe his HF blade with the other hand. But he's too slow, a tranquilliser dart catches him in the neck. He wants to puke. He tries to focus on the ground in front of him, but he ends up hurtling into it after his legs give out. One of the back-up guards catches him in a choke-hold, the arms around his neck tightening until he feels himself grow light-headed.

-

_Peering through the sights on a sniper rifle, Raiden takes in the view: Vamp's forehead aligned perfectly in the crosshairs. Around them, the shimmering waves with sky reflected on them are the wrong colour, though he can't pinpoint exactly how, nor what shade it is. He is unnaturally steady and he feels smaller than he should. He pulls the trigger and the bullet's movement is sluggish and sends ripples outwards, as if he were watching it travel through ballistics gel in slow motion. The bullet hits Emma Emmerich square in the chest, blood pooling through the fibres of her shirt. There isn't a gun in his hands any more. He curses Vamp, bellowing with all his strength. What comes out is just a tiny, hoarse cry. Now it is Raiden who is in Vamp's clutches, with a knife plunging into his chest. The familiar sensation of dying flows through him – the corners of his vision filling with white, spreading until it's all he can see._

_He comes to with cold, metal restraints on his wrists. Solidus paces up and down in front of him, Revolver Ocelot standing behind. They exchange words, muffled and tinny, as if they were underwater. The words may be directed at him but he can't tell. Appendages shoot from Solidus' back, shoving their way into his mouth. He screams – a watery sound again – and this time everything goes black._

-

Raiden's eyes snap open. He's awake for real, and in the room with him there are three people in lab coats muttering to each other. Helplessness wells up in his throat as he looks around. Concrete underneath him puts a dull pressure on his joints. The walls are concrete too, with a glass panel next to the door. There's nothing else in the room bar a rusting tin bucket in the corner to his right. He tries to look up but LED strip-lights are embedded in the ceiling. His eyes don't close quickly enough to avoid imprinting their blinding glare onto them.

One of them notices his movements. She addresses him as “Lab Rat” and another laughs, while the last averts his gaze. They leave without another word.

Soon, there's an unpleasant, droning tone transmitted through his codec implants. He can't turn it off. It's pretty annoying, but boredom and the constant, gnawing ache from sitting on the floor are worse. He hears the tone transforming and oscillating, and begins to zone out. Maybe this is still a dream after all.

It's white noise the next time he's back in himself.

The lights are still on.

He tries to smash the glass panel but he isn't strong enough – he just bruises his knuckles. 

-

It remains this way for god knows how long. Raiden slips in and out of consciousness, in and out of himself. There's no way to soothe any of his pain – physical or otherwise – because there's no words that Raiden knows which could describe it. Sometimes he can see one of his captors peering through the glass, guilt plastered all over his face. The same one that couldn't look him in the eye before. Raiden assumes he must enter the room while he's passed out because every so often a bowl of unidentifiable slop will appear, and the bucket of his own stale piss emptied. 

Eventually the full trio of scientists visit him again and he wants to rip their throats out but he's sprawled on the floor - too weak and emaciated to prise himself off it - and his attempts amount to little more than inconvenient leg-grabbing. They inject him with something and he can't struggle enough to stop them. A glimmer of hope appears to Raiden as he realises they could be killing him. This, combined with the fact that the noise seems to have stopped, provides Raiden with an unbelievable level of tranquillity. 

The scientists speak to each other again, scribble on their clipboards, leave. Raiden doesn't care. He rolls on his back, sprawls his limbs out like a starfish. Soon he'll be dead. He's never felt so content about the possibility, and it carries him into peaceful blackout.

-

Again, he cheats death. One of the scientists crouches over him, a mild look of concern mixed into his default guilt-ridden face. He asks him how he's feeling – his words and hands are jittery - and Raiden lets out a grunt which was probably supposed to be a laugh. A wall of noise assaults his ears once more, but the wave of endorphins doesn't reach far enough to even give him a cold sweat. Nothing of the sort manifests itself. The scientist tells him he's the first test subject for a set of nanomachines that dampen human emotions - a new form of mood stabilisers to be used in the military. He goes on to explain that they'll be putting him through another set of experiments to check if the nanos work, then blusters through a tirade of how sorry he is, how he didn't want things to turn out this way. He divulges his name – Dr. Kuzel – and leaves another bowl of “food” for Raiden before he leaves. 

True to Dr. Kuzel's word, he's subjected to the same torments he was before, and sure enough the nanos don't let him react. Even the relief he should feel when they tell him the testing is over doesn't come. Nothing is allowed to reach its conclusion. They tell him the experiment was a success and that they will be moving him on to a new one now. Dr Kuzel remains silent during their visit, but Raiden notices the intensity of his hand-wringing.

-

On their next visit, they cuff his wrists, lead him to a shower room and instruct him to wash himself. Its spotless, sterile white tiles shine with a gleam that would make even the most meticulous home-maker jealous. Weeks of grime – congealed sweat and dead skin – flows down the plug-hole and Raiden might feel ashamed or disgusted at this, but they never removed the suppressant nanomachines, so he's still nothing. He's nothing as he dries himself, nothing as they strap him to an operating table, nothing as a team of surgeons amputate his legs from the knee down.

They build him prosthetic legs that look more alien than human, though they function the same as his old ones. More nanomachines manage pain and the amputation wounds. Over several months, they hack away at him until all that's left of him is his head from the jaw up and a portion of his spine. It's all he needs, according to Dr. Sykes – the experiment's overseer. She tells Raiden about the first iteration of this research branch: Gray Fox. How she was a team member for that experiment too, and that they went about it all wrong, that using emotion to fuel bloodlust was inconsistent and that the ultimate soldier would be as close to a robot as possible. With cyborgs and nanomachines and bionics, all of this would become a reality. The light in her eyes and fervent giddiness in her voice passes over Raiden without judgement.

From the moment he was born, Raiden was raised to be a killing machine, and technology has come so far forward that only part of him that caused any problems, any conflicting feelings and cognitive dissonance, has been overridden and factored out.

It is what it is.

In the familiar realm of VR simulations and physical aptitude tests, he is back where he belongs. He scores off the charts in each test they give him and Dr. Sykes couldn't be more ecstatic. The cocktail of nanomachines flowing through him ensures that the delicate balance required is kept. They keep his emotions in check, and provide him with a well calculated surge of rewarding hormones as needed – just enough to condition him right. Unlike all the previous simulations, here he is given a seemingly endless variety of armaments to try. A sliver of his past pokes through and he branches off into the bladed weapons levels.

-

Dr. Kuzel visits him every day to check and record his vitals, and if necessary, inject him with nanomachine booster shots. Each visit he is falling over himself to chastise his behaviour and condemn Dr. Sykes as a sadist. It becomes clear that Kuzel only says these things for his own benefit, to absolve himself of his guilt, when each return shows no efforts made to rectify his compliance in her experiments. He is full of empty words and promises, just like Raiden was.

_This time will be different. I can change. I can be a better person. I'm sorry._

Kuzel tells the same old story that Raiden has heard a thousand times before – he didn't become a scientist to do this, he didn't think when he accepted the job offer, he just wanted to make a difference, to make himself known. Raiden thinks about Otacon, wonders if his family members have all said these exact same lines. 

Then, there is a day when Kuzel doesn't visit him, and Raiden finds out that he hung himself. He receives the information with a straight face; the nanomachines block anything that he would have felt.

-

Paradise Lost soldiers barge into his tiny, hospital-esque room. They take him by the arm and guide him out of the complex. He does what they tell him. As they run, he can see the occasional sleeping form, no doubt tranquillised by the steady hands that are holding him now. Raiden wonders how many days, months, years have passed. He still doesn't know and now isn't the time to ask. 

He's silent on the journey back. There's nothing to say and nothing to feel; he switches off again.

-

Another room, another bed, another scientist. Raiden wakes up once more to find his blood flushed free of the nanomachines and every emotion that Raiden never felt in the Patriots' laboratory happens all at once. He tries to stand, but keels over and curls up on the floor, clutching his knees to his chest as his brain tries to send out messages to his body to throw up. But he can't – the biological mechanism doesn't exist in him any more. All he can do is scream and even that isn't satisfying enough. As advanced as they were, the functions of all the wires and circuit boards in his body weren't designed with human emotion in mind.

One of the soldiers watching tries to approach him and calm him down, but Raiden lashes out like a cornered animal, and almost breaks their leg. Remorse shoots through him. He tries to tell them that he's a killer through and through, that they should put him down – out of his misery. He doesn't notice another soldier arrive to tell the soldiers or doctor leave in a hushed tone.

Raiden claws at his fake skin, wails and screeches, and he doesn't think this will ever end.

But it does. Just like every other time before that Raiden thought wouldn't end, so does this. After a few hours, he's spent. He doesn't feel the need to vocalise his distress and the urgent desperation has gone, though it leaves something much more insidious behind.

Alone with his thoughts, he comes to a realisation – that his curse isn't to be doomed to failure or misery. Somewhere in his head, he's known this for a long time, but now his body – an abomination of synthetic and organic matter – makes this painfully obvious.

Raiden's curse is to occupy the spaces that aren't there, to be caught in-between, and nothing he's done has given him the ability to claw his way of out his liminal prison. Not a civilian, but not a soldier; not a human, but not a machine; not alive, but not dead.

_Not liquid, but not solid._

He's not the only one to bear such a curse and he knows it, so he hauls himself up – exhausted in every facet of the word – to find Big Mama.

This time, he'll finish what he started.


	5. Chapter 5

Hearing Snake's voice after all this time is strange, but being the one giving him advice is stranger. This is where he'd found Big Boss again, making up for the previous disaster. The odd, isolated mansion wasn't guarded very well when he had infiltrated it, but now it was swarming with “Liquid Ocelot”'s units – a hodge-podge of FROGs, PMCs and Gekko. Naomi Hunter must be more important to them than Big Boss’ remains.

He follows Snake through the winding paths - full of dust and ragged scrub-land - and then he sees _him_. He should have been dead but there Vamp was, standing in clear view with Naomi in tow. Raiden's jaw clenched and ground his teeth together, real enamel grinding against fake polymer. Vamp should be dead, but by all rights, so should Raiden. He needs to move – to assist Snake – but he's paralysed as he stands and watches as a small troop of soldiers surround him. Until a god-awful noise debilitates them. It doesn't seem to affect Raiden, but Snake has to struggle to give himself a shot of nano-machines.

With perfect timing, an armoured personnel carrier barrels in, scooping up Snake and Naomi. He barely keeps up with them, following as they shoot down hoards of Gekko, but he does manage. Hopping and sprinting along market roof-tops, his synthetic legs allowing him to run further and faster than his previous ones ever could. 

Their vehicle crashes amongst streets crawling with Gekko. Raiden dispatches each one, deft and swift, allowing Snake, Naomi and Otacon to successfully escape via helicopter. They take off, and he turns to see a figure leaping towards him with a flourish. 

Before he has a chance to react, Vamp has him tied up with muddy-grey cables, stretching from the machines, constricting his movements and circling him like creeping vines. Vamp stabs him where his heart would be, grinning when the blood that spurts out of the wound isn't red. He takes another stab, and calls Raiden immortal. It disgusts him, and his response is full of a fake bravado that makes him feel like a child trying desperately to prove his worth to a school bully. One of the cables snaps with a sharp noise -- Snake must have shot it -- and Raiden uses this opportunity to swing the Gekko around him as if they were a lasso. Though even when he does hit Vamp with an attack, it doesn’t seem to make a difference. Raiden's next move takes the sting out of Vamp's “immortal” comment for a moment, when he doesn't notice any difference between the give in his and Vamp's bodies. He drives his HF blade through their torsos and watches white trickle down from the wound. It’s unbelievably satisfying.

Vamp whispers another ridiculous sentence into his ear before staggering backwards and keeling over, and Raiden leaps into the Otacon's chopper. They're all talking about something, but he doesn't really hear because his body is juddering, and his jaw chatters as he coughs and splutters up his fake blood all over the inside of the helicopter. Using the last of his energy, he gives Snake very brief information about Big Mama, and where he can be patched up. The last thing he thinks before collapsing is that he'll always be in debt. He'll always owe Snake his life. The thought doesn't get any further as his body shuts itself down to avoid any more damage.

 

-

White, suspended ceiling tiles with near-blinding LED strip lights cause a huge rush of panic, and a short, gurgling noise makes it's way out of his mouth. Someone he assumes is a doctor pauses his work to ask Raiden if he's OK. Another gurgle surfaces – Raiden's not entirely sure if it's a yes or no, but he is relieved when he recognises Dr. Madnar's solemn eyes. His own eyelids flicker and stop him from focusing properly, but he manages to catch that Madnar has his hands in Raiden's abdomen – fixing the damage done from his fight with Vamp by replacing the severed fibres and broken chipsets, and re-soldering connections. He doesn't feel any of it.

There's something soothing about Dr. Madnar. Perhaps it's the way he doesn't speak much English, so communication between them is limited to short phrases, hand gestures and tone of voice. Perhaps it's the nature of their relationship – this is just Madnar's job, and Raiden can tell he enjoys his work. He's the complete opposite of any other medical professional that Raiden has encountered. Whatever it is, Raiden feels at ease for a while.

 

-

He stares upwards and in his head, he makes shapes from the patterns on the ceiling tiles. There is a creaking sound, followed by a clicking of high-heels, and then Naomi Hunter is looming over him. In the dim light filtering in through the door, he can see her face is damp and tinged red under her eyes. He has no idea how she managed to find him, nor how she managed to get into the building in the first place. All she does is stand and watch him breathe. In, out. Her face twitches slightly, as if she is trying not to laugh.

In a sudden movement, Naomi grabs hold of his shoulders and tears plop against his visor. She shakes him, keeps mouthing the same thing over and over. Raiden can only hear the d's and t's but he can just about figure it out. And he knows she's not really talking to him. He doesn't know if it's appropriate to answer and he can't look her in the eye because Dr. Sykes told him every intricate detail about Gray Fox. Their experiences are incomparable and it makes Raiden feel pathetic. Tears of his own start to form, and Naomi's shaking increases in vigour. She keeps asking.

What did they do to you, what did they do to you, what did they do to you.

Tell me!

She hisses it at him and in a moment of terror he folds under her demand. The speaker in his throat is barely audible and he doesn't talk about himself. He doesn't share his own horrors, instead telling Naomi everything he knows about Gray Fox. Naomi's hands retreat, resting just under her nose, and she looks straight through him as she listens.

When Raiden finishes speaking, she whispers something through her hands -- possibly “sorry”, though Raiden can’t really tell -- and turns around. There's a clicking of high-heels and a creaking sound, and Raiden stares at the ceiling, making shapes from the lines and dots.

-

It's a Paradise Lost soldier who comes to collect him, bring him back to Snake, Otacon and Sunny. Madnar warns him that he still needs time to perform a full dialysis, but he understands the dire circumstances, so he sends him off with the machine and materials to do so in the Nomad. As they drive to where it has landed, there is another soldier in the back of the truck with him, trying to tell him something about Big Mama. She chews the inside of her mouth, and looks everywhere in the truck but him, until she manages to speak. Everything has gone wrong, she tells him, scratching at the back of her neck, and she coughs again to disguise the cracks in her voice. She skirts around the point she’s trying to make, though Raiden is able to extrapolate that Big Mama is dead. What would have been Raiden’s stomach tries to re-create a sinking feeling, but it’s not very good at it, he just feels like he has indigestion. It's a short, but awkward, journey back. 

-

He tries to convince Snake and Otacon to let him help, but Sunny scrambles in front of him, arms out to guard him, and Snake pulls off the gauze covering the angry burn on his right cheek. Snake may understand a lot about Raiden, but neither he nor Sunny could possibly understand how it feels to owe this much. They don't understand how heavy the guilt weighs, don't know what it's like to have to be bailed out constantly, don't know how isolated and alone he's been for his whole life. Raiden clings to his leg and cries because it's all he can think of doing while Snake tells him all the right things, reassures him not to throw his life away once more. But he doesn't want to hear it. All he wants is to absolve himself of the sickening guilt; all he wants is to belong.

\--

Too engrossed in viewing Shadow Moses from the eyes of the Mk II, Otacon doesn’t notice Raiden shifting. Sunny's bottom lip wobbles and her stammer is even more pronounced as she tells Raiden a cryptic statement on the off-chance that they stumble upon Naomi. She ‘cooked them right’. He doesn't have a clue what it's supposed to mean, but he knows it's not about eggs – Sunny is old beyond her years, forced to grow up faster than she should have. Like he was.

He steels himself as he disembarks the Nomad, making his first steps onto the frozen terrain. 

This isn't just Snake's fight. It's Otacon's and Sunny's; Emma and Olga's; His.

-

Vamp practically begs for death, and the same ridiculous back-and-forth from South America happens again. If he didn't harbour such a deep loathing of Vamp, if he wasn’t the cause of so much trauma, he'd almost feel like an old sparring partner. Finally, he manages to lure Vamp in, tensing his fibrous muscles to send the daggers lodged in his chest shooting out into Vamp. 

He falls off the Metal Gear, rolls towards Snake, Naomi and Otacon. Raiden tells Naomi Sunny's cryptic message, and she sighs in relief, as if a great weight has been lifted. Vamp’s body – covered in splotches of white and red – all but disintegrates in front of them, with Naomi following suit shortly after. Raiden is almost jealous, until Otacon laments that Vamp’s death -- anyone’s death -- won’t change a thing. He’s probably right.

-

He thinks back to Otacon’s words, and knows that following his rash instincts won't change anything. But he can't help feeling that he'll get his closure now if he mimics Gray Fox's actions. This time he will finally be the saviour, _the martyr_ that he’s always wanted to be. Everything inside him lurches as the ship crashes into him but he won't budge. Pain isn't anything to worry about, nor is death. But he cries out a name he never thought he'd think about again.

-

He's still not dead. He thinks of smashing the machine that's keeping him alive but he doesn't have the power to do so. He doesn't think there's any reason for him to be here any more because he's finally managed to repay that debt. But really, he was foolish to think any of this was anything to do with him. He berates himself: he's selfish, there's no reason for him to be this way. Each time he tries to perform that final act loyalty to repay everything, something -- or someone -- has pulled him back. By the skin of his teeth, he's still here.

So it's not about him, and it never was. Nothing ever was.

A few hours pass and an enormous crash wakes him up – something must have hit the ship. Sunny sits next to him, grasping onto his arm to stop herself from falling over. He waits until there's a moment to stabilise, both himself and Sunny, and struggles with the cables plugged into him. Some he can pull out with his teeth, others he has to yank his body away from the support machine several times before they come off. Sunny's face makes him choke up while she tries to argue with him – convincing him he has to stay and rest. Kindness and caring still break his guard, even after all these years. It's embarrassing and he's sick of crying, so he gets himself to his feet and simply tells her no. Sunny stops talking and raises her gaze to the ceiling -- as if she’s trying to stop her tears through sheer force of will -- before she runs to another room, and the feeling of his artificial blood rushing through his body makes him feel queasy again. 

-

Somehow, he manages to land on the ship's deck. He rolls over, expecting an attack, but it seems that Liquid's FROG units are engaged elsewhere. Raiden follows the trail of incapacitated bodies and sure enough, they lead him to Snake.

As he looks over Snake's face, it kicks in just how old he looks - he hadn't had time to notice it until now. Sorrow lodges itself in his throat, he should be the one walking through that corridor, but he concedes and allows him to head on through the door. He can't begrudge Snake for his choice; Raiden realises that he must have his own guilt to carry. There's no time to look back at Snake as he disappears.

All Raiden can do is batter back the hoards of FROG units. They crowd around him, seeming to somehow have a bizarre sense of honour instilled in them, swapping their guns for knives. He fights until they drop and he knows Snake has done his job. There's an eerie silence as he slumps over, visor making a sharp clacking noise as it hits the solid floor, that sorrow still thoroughly embedded in his throat.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (So I kind of... I like the ending Raiden gets in mgs4 but I feel like it kinda ignores a bunch of issues and just gleans over them in favour of a fairytale ending (which is fine and I get why, but I wanted to change it a little in this fic).. i hope it still fits in ok)

A nurse bustles in and opens the curtains. Bright light filters through the leaves on the tree just outside the window, giving the room a yellowy-green tinge. She checks the lights on the machines are all the right colour, all making the right noise, and makes a note of it on the clipboard at the foot of the bed. Every day is the same – the check-up, nothing, the half hour of physio, nothing, another check-up, sleep. Raiden curses that technology is advanced enough to leave his new body stiff and sore from lying down too much. He's sick of the sterile hospital walls and its machines, sick of how they remind him of the Patriots' compound he was held in. At least they were gone now, even if it was a pyrrhic victory.

The nurse squeaks in surprise as she goes to open the door. A woman and child walk in. It's Rose. Raiden's brain blanks out. 

She tells him she wants him to have a part in his son's life. That she knows it won't ever be the same and it's not fair on either of them to give that illusion. That all he needs to contribute is his presence. She doesn't need money, doesn't need the company. John just wants to know his father, that's all.

Then she gives him the conditions. This time she won't cut him any slack if he isn't willing to make steps to his recovery. It's not to scare him, and she reassures him that she's more than capable of supporting him in this, and that she has plenty of resources and patience. For a moment, he doesn't think he deserves it, but he realises that there isn't any point in thinking like that any more. For the first time in his life, it’s more effort to keep up his self-defeating attitude than it is to change it.

Plus, her ultimatum is more than reasonable.

He can’t change what happened -- neither his own, or even Rose’s, past behaviours. They aren't in love and they probably won't be again, but Raiden thinks it's better this way. Maybe he doesn't deserve another chance after everything he's tried to throw away, but the kid – John, he corrects himself – certainly does. 

He agrees because really, what excuse does he have now?

John beams from ear to ear - scrambling up onto the hospital bed to hold his dad’s hand, and Rose has tears in her eyes as she moves over to squeeze Raiden’s shoulder.

There’s a surge of deja-vu, he’s brought back to that moment after he defeated Solidus in Manhattan, and he realises that wasn’t a second chance, there never would have been any chances for him had the Patriots remained.

So now, _this_ is his second chance. He’s finally reached the liberty he’s been chasing after his whole life.

He’s free.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> gosh! i didn't think i'd even finish this tbh...( a fun fact, it's 4000 words longer than my undergrad dissertation...) so between now and the first chapter being uploaded, i quit uni, started a new part time job, left that to go to another job with a 42 hr week, had some medical issues, and a bunch of other life stuff get in the way... 
> 
> it ended up being way more personal than i'd intended it to be, so i just want to thank anyone who commented, kudos'd or messaged about it. it means a great deal that people were actually interested in reading this, so thanks for your patience and understanding, and i really really hope it's lived up to your expectations <3

**Author's Note:**

> Fic title comes from [ this song ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQ123YNA4Wc) by Aereogramme.


End file.
